


Need to Hear

by crowning_glory



Series: ❧ katchen [2]
Category: Mean Girls (2004), Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 02:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18023228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowning_glory/pseuds/crowning_glory
Summary: ♕Karen wishes that they could just tell everyone that they're dating.





	Need to Hear

“We should tell Regina,” Karen says seriously, fingers tapping against the side of her mug. “It’s been four months and we can’t even kiss in the hallways. Dawn Schweitzer kissed her boyfriend in front of everyone on, like, the day they got together,” she pouts a little, staring across the room at Gretchen who was seated at Karen’s vanity, applying a pair of false eyelashes. “It’s not fair—”

 

“No. It’s not fair,” Gretchen cuts her off abruptly, sighing as she caps the tiny bottle of eyelash glue and turns around. Karen giggles; she looks weird with only one set of eyelashes on. “Karen, it’s not funny. You know what Regina did to Janis just because there was the possibility of her liking girls. If she found out that we were dating… God, I don’t even want to think about it.”

 

They’ve had this conversation a million and one times. Almost every time they see each other outside of school. But Gretchen remains stubborn, and Karen isn’t going to go against her girlfriend with something so important. Maybe she doesn’t really understand Gretchen’s reasoning, but that doesn’t give her the right to go behind Gretchen’s back and do the opposite of what she wants. Karen’s dad says that that’s a one-way ticket to trouble.

 

Karen takes a sip of her hot chocolate. “But if Regina gets mad at us then we still have each other,” she counters. They usually drop the argument by now, at Gretchen’s snappy comebacks, but Karen doesn’t want to hide this anymore. “We won’t be eating alone ‘cause we can eat together. And we’ll be able to kiss.”

 

Gretchen gets up this time, crossing Karen’s bedroom. Karen puts her mug on her bedside table. “I know it’s frustrating, babe,” she says, taking Karen’s hands as she sits opposite her on the bed, cross-legged. “But if we tell Regina then it’s going to cause a lot of trouble that we can’t really deal with,” she presses a kiss to Karen’s lips before pulling away. “I don’t know about you but I’m not as strong as Sarkisian. I couldn’t stand getting dirty looks every day. You’ve got to understand that it won’t just be Regina that we’re telling, Karen, it’ll be everyone. And they haven’t been the most accepting of Janis, have they?”

 

“I guess not,” Karen grimaces, knowing that they’ve helped add to that. She repositions herself so that she’s laying on her side, hugging her stuffed bear to her chest as she stares across the room at her girlfriend who’s sat in front of the vanity again.

 

It sucks that they can’t be a proper couple. Karen loves Gretchen a lot and she doesn’t think it’s fair that they can’t show that just because they’re girls. It makes her stomach hurt when she thinks about how they used to bully Janis for it. It makes everything a little more complicated—they'd bullied Janis for liking girls even though they like girls—but Karen tries not to think about it too much because otherwise she gets too confused and feels too guilty.

 

All Karen wants is to tell people that she and Gretchen are dating. That’s all. Maybe to kiss in front of them too, because that’s what most couples do, right? And she’ll never say it out loud but she kind of hates Regina for being so close-minded that they can’t do that.

 

Karen doesn’t really like Regina for a lot of reasons, but that’s one of them. Regina thinks she’s better than everyone else and Karen bought into it when she was a kid but not so much anymore. The meaner that Regina got the more Karen was starting to realise how much of a bad friend the other girl was. Especially when she was rude to Gretchen—it was getting harder and harder for Karen to bite her tongue at all of the mean remarks because now she knows just how much they affect Gretchen.

 

“We could tell Cady,” Karen pipes up after a while of silence, propping herself up on her elbow. She doesn’t even know what Gretchen is doing to her face now—as much as she pretends that she’s a makeup expert, Karen isn’t very clued up on it at all—but the other girl just shakes her head.

 

“She’ll tell Regina,” Gretchen says simply and Karen nods. Right. She hadn’t thought about that. “You’re sweet, Karen, and I love that you want to tell everyone, but we just have to wait a bit, alright?”

 

“Alright,” Karen nods again. She falls back against her pillows and stares at the back of Gretchen’s head. “We could tell my parents.”

 

“No.”

 

“We could tell your parents?”

 

“ _No._ ”

 

“We could tell Mrs. George?”

 

Gretchen whirls around in her seat, eyebrows raised. “Yeah. let’s go do that. Let’s get your dad to drive us over there right now and tell her,” she snaps and the tone of her voice is sharp enough to make Karen flinch. Gretchen’s face softens, and she seems to deflate a little. “Babe. Who do you think Mrs. George will tell? You know that she can’t keep a secret and that she’s terrified of Regina. And I don’t particularly want Regina to find out about this relationship by bullying the secret out of her mom.”

 

Karen doesn’t respond, fiddling with the paw of her teddy bear. She hears Gretchen get up and feels the bed dip when she climbs on. There’s shuffling as she lays down opposite her, and then she gently takes Karen’s teddy bear and sits it on the bedside table. Karen tries her best to blink back her tears, but her bottom lip starts trembling and then she makes eye contact with Gretchen and she’s reminded just how much she loves her and it’s all too much because Karen just wants to tell everyone.

 

“I’m tired,” she sobs as Gretchen shushes her and dabs at her cheeks with a tissue. “I don’t want to keep hiding it,” And it feels weird to be comforted because it’s usually the other way around, but she’s crying too hard to point that out. And maybe that’s for the best because Karen doesn’t think that Gretchen will take that in a good way—although she's not even sure there is a good way to take that.  “I love you and I want everyone to know it.”

 

And Gretchen stays quiet, manoeuvering both of them into a sitting position. She rubs Karen’s back and holds her close and lets Karen mumble and cry without being interrupted. Eventually, Karen manages to pull herself back together and once she stops crying she leans lifelessly back against her pillows, staring down at the tissue she’s fiddling with. She wants to apologise to Gretchen for being a mess because they were supposed to be having a fun afternoon, but she can’t seem to form words.

 

“Do you really want to tell your parents?” Gretchen asks softly after a while. “We can do that if you really, really want to. Maybe—maybe not today. I don’t think I can do it today. But we can tell them soon and then we don’t have to hide it as much anymore.”

 

Karen manages a smile at that, letting her head fall onto Gretchen’s shoulder. She’s not really sure why they haven’t told Karen’s parents yet; they’ll support everything Karen does (within reason, of course). And she doesn’t think that they’ll be surprised to hear it. Her mom keeps asking her questions that Gretchen says means that she’s on to them. Karen would have never realised on her own, but now that it’s been pointed out she can see it.

 

Telling her parents isn’t close to telling the whole school, but it’ll at least be  _someone_. Karen can tell them about the dates that she and Gretchen go on, she can ask her mom for advice on what to get Gretchen for Valentine’s Day. She doesn’t have to keep it all to herself anymore.

 

“We can tell them on Saturday,” she murmurs, letting her eyes shut. Crying is exhausting. Maybe they can spend the rest of the afternoon together napping.

 

“Yeah,” Gretchen nods. “We can tell them on Saturday.”

 

“Grool,” Karen says. “That’s the word that Cady says sometim—”

 

“I know,” Gretchen cuts her off with a kiss. “Telling your parents will be grool.”

 

Karen can’t wait. Maybe the positive reaction from Karen’s parents will boost Gretchen’s confidence, maybe then she’ll agree to tell Regina. Sure, Karen’s kinda scared about doing that too, but even if the entire world turned against them she’d still be by Gretchen’s side.

 

And maybe, in the long run, losing Regina as a friend wouldn’t be the worst thing to ever happen to them anyway. After all, she’s not much of a friend.

 

Karen would take Gretchen over Regina any day.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! ♥
> 
> ⋆[pinterest.](https://pin.it/axdt62ze5gutav)  
>  ⋆[twitter.](https://twitter.com/crowning_gloryy)


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